Recently, with increasing demand for construction of luxurious and comfortable buildings, marble has attracted attention as a construction material. However, despite high hardness and beautiful patterns, natural marble has not been popularized due to high cost, high weight, and vulnerability to external shock.
Unlike natural marble, artificial marble can implement various images and patterns. In addition, artificial marble can have a pleasing appearance and good workability and is lighter and stronger than natural marble. Such artificial marble is widely used as various interior/exterior materials for butcher blocks, dressing tables, washstands, counters, walls, floors, furniture, and the like.
Artificial marble can be fabricated by mixing a resin component with natural crushed stone, minerals, and engineered stone, followed by curing. The shape, color, and mix proportions of engineered stone and the like are considered important to realize pleasing appearance of artificial marble.
Engineered stone is fabricated by preparing resin panels and crushing the panels. Engineered stone can realize various textures and patterns according to the kind and composition of a resin material for panels and the content of inorganic fillers. Engineered stone is divided into transparent chips having high transparency and marble chips having low transparency.
Thereamong, transparent chips have difficulty in implementing stripe patterns. Examples of a method for forming stripe patterns on engineered stone include using a liquid resin and using natural or synthetic fibers. However, use of the liquid resin can cause deterioration in three-dimensional effects of artificial marble. In addition, use of the natural or synthetic fibers can cause transparent chips to have unfilled surfaces or suffer from bubbling due to pores in the fibers. This can cause significant deterioration in fouling resistance and appearance of artificial marble. Further, resin panels containing natural or synthetic fibers can be difficult to crush into a desired size and shape due to considerable difference in crushing strength between the resin panels and the fibers.
Therefore, there is a need for improved artificial marble chips which allow easy formation of linear stripe patterns and can provide three-dimensional effects inherent to transparent chips while implementing texture of natural stone, and artificial marble including the same.